{"id":7594,"date":"2012-03-06T16:25:07","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T16:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=7594"},"modified":"2012-03-06T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-06T16:25:07","slug":"africa-must-be-ready-to-defend-itself-against-resurgent-western-imperialism-former-namibian-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/06\/africa-must-be-ready-to-defend-itself-against-resurgent-western-imperialism-former-namibian-president\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa Must Be Ready To Defend Itself Against Resurgent Western Imperialism: Former Namibian President"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Sam Nujoma explains why Africa should prepare for military confrontation<\/p>\n

====<\/p>\n

While pouring scorn on the West, and NATO in particular, Nujoma reserved a few choice words for the African Union, which he said had woefully failed to mobilise militarily to stop the bombing of Libya.<\/p>\n

Nujoma, who is known as the Father of the Namibian nation, said Africa\u2019s sovereignty was not up for debate, adding that Africans should also talk war ? a language he said is best understood by Western countries.<\/p>\n

====<\/p>\n

Windhoek: Africa should stand ready to take up arms to defend the continent\u2019s sovereignty against \u201cresurgent Western imperialist forces\u201d, whose renewed resolve to control the continent\u2019s abundant natural resources was manifest in the murder of Libya\u2019s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

In an exclusive interview with The Southern Times this week, Namibia\u2019s former president, Dr. Sam Nujoma, contended that there is a new scramble for Africa. A fiery liberation struggle icon, Nujoma said the \u201cright to protect\u201d and \u201chumanitarian intervention\u201d were being used to reassert Western control of Africa. NATO\u2019s overthrow of Libya\u2019s Gaddafi should be \u201ccondemned and rejected\u201d by all right-thinking Africans, Nujoma said.<\/p>\n

He said the continent\u2019s youth should be ready to defend Africa\u2019s territorial integrity in much the same way his generation did when removing the yoke of colonialism.<\/p>\n

The iconic freedom fighter, who left office in 2005 and handed over leadership to incumbent President Hifikepunye Pohamba, did not hide his disdain for the West\u2019s military intervention in Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is naked aggression on the part of the Western imperialist countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are trying to recolonise our continent; create puppet regimes as happened in Libya,\u201d Nujoma said.<\/p>\n

While pouring scorn on the West, and NATO in particular, Nujoma reserved a few choice words for the African Union, which he said had woefully failed to mobilise militarily to stop the bombing of Libya.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe African Union should have mobilised the forces in order to fight and defend the territorial integrity of Libya.<\/p>\n

\u201c(The case of) Libya in particular is naked aggression on the part of the imperialists and this must be condemned and rejected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI particularly call upon the youth of Africa, be prepared to fight and defend this continent,\u201d Nujoma declared.<\/p>\n

Britain, France and the US marshalled their air forces in a mendacious pledge to \u201cprotect\u201d Libyan civilians in Benghazi from Gaddafi.<\/p>\n

When air power failed to dislodge Gaddafi, ground troops were extensively deployed in Libya to drive the offensive that resulted in the deaths of many civilians and the destruction of infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The \u201cright to protect\u201d quickly mutated into an all-out war to topple the Gaddafi regime, which had fallen out of favour with the Western powers.<\/p>\n

Nujoma, who is known as the Father of the Namibian nation, said Africa\u2019s sovereignty was not up for debate, adding that Africans should also talk war ? a language he said is best understood by Western countries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe imperialists understand no other words than fighting. We dislodged them from our continent by fighting them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we did not fight in Namibia or in Zimbabwe or elsewhere, we would not be free today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must now prepare to fight them,\u201d Nujoma asserted.<\/p>\n

The former president, who still holds sway in Namibian politics, also slammed criticism of Chinese investments in Africa.<\/p>\n

Nujoma said solidifying trade and political ties with China, which is set to overcome the US as the world\u2019s largest economy by 2015, strengthens South-South co-operation.<\/p>\n

Above all, African countries are sovereign states, which can decide which relationships are mutually beneficial, he pointed out.<\/p>\n

He said Africans should not listen to \u201cimperialists\u2019 propaganda\u201d against China, adding that Beijing was an \u201cold friend of Namibia\u201d and had extensively supported the country\u2019s liberation struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is implementing its policy on South-South co-operation and that is what the SWAPO party is implementing and China is an old friend of ours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t listen to imperialists; you listen to the imperialists, we don\u2019t listen to them.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere we do what we think will benefit the Namibian people and the African people in general,\u201d Nujoma said.<\/p>\n

He lamented the slow pace of land reform in Namibia, which he attributed to \u201csabotage\u201d by whites who do not fully appreciate the policy of national reconciliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought that when we have adopted the policy of national reconciliation, those whites who remained with us in Namibia, they have accepted our policy also of land reform but we see now they are sabotaging land reform,\u201d Nujoma said.<\/p>\n

Namibia\u2019s Founding President also talked about how Namibia and the rest of the African continent should invest in human resources, come up with policies which force multinational companies to process raw materials locally and how best the continent\u2019s second phase of economic liberation can be won.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Nujoma explains why Africa should prepare for military confrontation ==== While pouring scorn on the West, and NATO in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[699,1711,905,1712],"class_list":["post-7594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-africa","tag-imperialism","tag-namibia","tag-western"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}